The present invention relates to a computer system, a storage system, and techniques for facilitating the configuration of the storage system on a management console.
With the advance of information technologies, proliferation of the Internet, and the like, the amount of data handled by computer systems operated in enterprises continues to increase. Therefore, a storage system for preserving a large capacity of data is an essential material for a computer system. There are a variety of storage systems which provide a small scale to a large scale of configurations.
As a storage system becomes more important in a computer system, the storage system presents a challenge in a reduction of cost, including the operation and administration. For this reason, there is a need for a storage system which can be increased in scale in accordance with the scale of an associated computer system with reasonable investments, i.e., a storage system which meets both cost performance and performance scalability.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1 discloses one type of storage system. The storage system provided by U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1 comprises a plurality of channel interface units for executing data transfers between computers (hereinafter also called the “server”); a plurality of disk interface units for executing data transfers between hard disk drives; a cache memory unit for temporarily storing data which is to be stored in hard disk drives; and a control memory unit for storing control information. In the storage system of U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1, the channel interface units, disk interface units, and cache memory unit are connected to one another through an interconnection, and the channel interface units, disk interface units, and control memory unit are also connected to one another through the interconnection. The interconnection comprises a common bus, switches, and the like. A variety of configurations in different scales can be accomplished by changing the number of the channel interface units and disk interface units.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,961 B1 discloses a storage system, wherein a plurality of disk arrays are connected to a plurality of servers through disk array switches, and the plurality of disk arrays are managed as a single storage system by a system configuration management unit connected to the disk array switch and to each disk array.
Generally, required performance (the number of times of data input/output operations per unit time, and the amount of data transferred per unit time) for a server connected to a storage system is not always the same. In addition, the required performance such as the number of times of input/output operations per unit time largely depends on the performance of a particular processor employed in a storage system for assignment to a data input/output process. If the required performance for a server is not consistent with the performance of a processor assigned to handle input/output commands received from the server, the following problems can arise. Specifically, when a processor has processing performance higher than predetermined required performance called for by a server which is connected to a port associated with the processor, the processor provides excessive processing performance. On the other hand, when a processor has processing performance lower than predetermined required performance called for by a server which is connected to a port associated with the processor, the processor may fail to provide sufficient processing performance.
The storage system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1 can take a configuration suitable for the number of servers and hard disk drives which can be connected in the system by increasing or decreasing channel interface units and disk interface units as required. However, in the storage system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1, each channel interface unit has a processor, and a port connected to a server is in a fixed correspondence relationship with a processor which processes commands from the port. With this fixed correspondence, in the storage system of U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,681 B1, excessive processing performance can be provided by a processor associated with a port which is connected to a server that calls for low required performance, or insufficient processing performance can be provided by a processor associated with a port which is connected to a server that calls for high required performance.
The storage system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,961 B1 in turn can change the number of host interfaces connected to servers and disk array subsets by connecting the disk array switches in multiple stages. However, U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,961 B1 does not particularly take into consideration how processors can be configured to effectively utilize resources provided by the system in accordance with required performance of the respective servers. Therefore, for determining the configuration of the storage system in U.S. Pat. No. 6,542,961 B1, an administrator must be aware of the performance, use situation, and the like of each disk array subset, thus forcing the administrator to be in charge of difficult configuration operations.